More than the multiple demands for Statehood in Assam, it is the
insistence on closed, ethnically homogenous and exclusive units that
gives cause for concern

It has been almost a year since western Assam’s Bodoland Territorial
Autonomous District (BTAD) witnessed unprecedented violence that left
hundreds dead and thousands displaced. Since then, there has been a
predictable report from the Central Bureau of Investigation pointing to
the role of various political entrepreneurs in the clashes and shedding
scant light on the layers of complicity between the State and various
non-State actors in fomenting trouble. The recent verdict on the
formation of the state of Telangana has already led to agitation for
separate states in Assam, Bodoland being but one of many competing
claims over common territory. One has to remember that ever since
India’s independence, questions of belonging, claims to land, resources
and political demands for autonomy have been part of an incendiary
amalgam that has resulted in thousands of deaths and many more displaced
in the State of Assam. These debates are likely to sharpen, now that
both Central and State administrations are trying to bully
autonomy-seeking activists into tempering their demands for separate
homelands.

Historians and linguists mapped people, places and pasts into this area
in a manner that lends itself to contestations and conflicts in Assam.
This mapping has rested on a finite set of beliefs and ideas that appear
with predictable frequency. Hence, indentured workers and immigrant
peasant communities were invested with a particular narrative of
movement and identity that they find difficult to shake off even now.
For all practical purposes, BTAD — like other parts of northeast India —
is peopled by two kinds of communities: (a) those who claim a
pre-colonial presence and (b) those who came during the colonial period.

Entrapment, resource capture

The demand for Bodoland is actually the culmination of almost 60 years
of political mobilisation among the various indigenous tribes in the
plains of Assam. The bases of these demands have their roots in the
colonial moment of contact between a predominantly European
administration and local communities. It is through this 19th century
encounter that the political, social and economic structures of the
region were to be transformed radically. Among the more salient causes
is the fact that the land and forest-based rural economy has been
irretrievably transformed. Extrapolating from historical and political
scholarship on the region, Belgian scholars Nel Vandekerckhove and Bert
Suykens term this process as one of “tribal entrapment,” wherein 19th
century colonial policies were responsible for sequestering forests from
indigenous tribal groups in the Brahmaputra valley. Between the
expanding tea plantations and tightly secured forests, land use rules in
the Brahmaputra valley became unfavourable for indigenous communities.
This continues to add rancour to political debates and claims for ethnic
homelands.

These demands are also an extension of the acrimonious debates of the
early 20th century where Assamese nationalists raised the issue of
immigration from Bengal and the Gangetic plains, much to the dismay of
their counterparts in the mainland. In the 1950s and 1960s, tribal
leaders had to remind caste-Hindu Assamese politicians about the need to
redistribute power and administrative control to ensure the development
of their communities. The idea of losing control over land and the
markets — both of which evoked radical nationalist sentiments among the
Assamese-speaking political class in the 20th century — had similar
echoes among educated tribal leaders, who then looked upon Dispur as the
source of their problems. The idea, therefore, of setting up the mirror
image of the State — with a secretariat, legislative assembly and
university — is a very strong impulse and a rite of passage for leaders
in Haflong, Kokrajhar and Diphu that cannot be wished away. However, it
is the insistence on closed, ethnically homogenous units that is cause
for concern and unfortunately, the homeland demands seem to play right
into the script that insists on extreme forms of exclusion. This
obfuscates the fact that most homeland demands have actually grown out
of coalitions and alliances of disparate groups who felt short-changed
by the status quo.

Confronting autonomy

There is a popular belief that Assam, unlike many of its northeastern
neighbours, is a multi-ethnic State, where composite identities and
cultures are a norm. While this might be a comforting salve in times of
conflict, the manner in which communitarian demands have taken on ethnic
tones proves otherwise. Since the 1990s, various governments —
including the ones led by the Asom Gana Parishad — have cynically
created toothless, autonomous councils for every community with a
pre-colonial claim to belonging in the Brahmaputra valley. Political
scientist Sanjib Baruah likens these councils to the Bantustans of
apartheid-era South Africa and in a sense, he is not far off the mark.
Assam’s autonomous arrangements are far more tragic though. While every
community can aspire to demand a council, perhaps even an autonomous
state if its numbers are right, the two largest groups within Assam —
Bengali-speaking Muslims and Adivasis — will forever remain outside the
ethnic homeland arrangements, since their presence can be clearly dated
to the colonial period. Hence, the insiders versus outsider tensions
assume serious consequences for all in the State.

Every time there is talk of extending the powers of an autonomous
council, other communities, especially those who can never claim a
council of their own, are quick to protest. They fear that their land
and livelihoods will be lost, that they will be left without a political
voice and that they will forever live under the shadow of fear and
violence. This suits political entrepreneurs from every community since
it reflects the empirical realities of forced displacement from villages
and farms that have taken place in almost every district for the last
decade. Land, whether as an asset to be acquired or one to be lost,
remains the most frequently cited cause for concern for all communities
in the State. Therefore, it is hardly surprising that one of the most
contentious matters for non-Bodo communities in BTAD is the transfer of
the department of land and revenue from Dispur to Kokrajhar.

One is not sure if this means an end to land alienation for indigenous
communities and their equally beleaguered neighbours. Agriculture has
become just another means of livelihood among many for people of rural
Assam, especially in the autonomous areas such as BTAD. For six days a
week, rows of cycles are parked outside the enormous gates of Samdrup
Jhonkar that borders Bhutan and Baksa district in western Assam. They
belong to daily wage earners from the Assam side of the border, who
throng out at 5 p.m. every day and return home to villages where dreams
of political justice have been subsumed by the crassness of new economic
realities.

Unless Assam’s political entrepreneurs are able to comprehend the weight
of this transformation of the State’s politics and economy, one is
afraid that the cynicism displayed in last year’s violence will
reappear. If so, the much-needed efforts to foster dialogue and
non-violent debates on the politics of belonging, claims to land and
resources and demands for autonomy, will suffer a tremendous setback. On
the government’s part, it would be more judicious to initiate dialogue
with activists, rather than set them on a path of confrontation that
might lead to more violence in the near future.